


Almost Out of Minutes

by lysanatt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, M/M, Spoilers S05E04 - The End
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:47:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lysanatt/pseuds/lysanatt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time is a factor, Dean thinks, when one lives but an instant compared to the eternal life of an angel. But sometimes minutes and seconds can be bent and stretched, leaving a small window in time and space, making the impossible possible. Five years into the future, Dean finds the love he's been looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Almost Out of Minutes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkforetold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkforetold/gifts).



> **Warnings and content** : Romance, love that's not as much unrequited as impossible.  
>  **Spoilers** : S5E4 - The End  
>  **Notes** : Pinch hit for darkforetold who asked for a _The End_ -timeline story and sad!fic. Happy belated New Year, darkforetold. Also, it amuses me to no end that Dean reads Vonnegut in canon, hence the Slaughterhouse 5 refs.

**Almost Out of Minutes**

 

War is eternity jammed into frantic minutes that will fill a lifetime with dreams and nightmares.  
~John Cory

 

The woods surrounding Camp Chitaqua are quiet, apart from an occasional night owl and a fox screaming for food or mates. Food, probably, it's late in the year. A generator hums out there in the dark, providing enough energy to power the weak light over the table. Dean opens a beer and gulps down half of it. Silently he thanks Chuck for providing the six-pack. The day has been a string of events which needs to be flushed down with a beer or three. Or six. His future self has run off to do what future selves do, leaving Dean alone with his thoughts. And the beer. Could be worse. Tilting the rickety chair back, leaning against the wall, Dean cradles the can of beer lovingly, grateful for the pause in what seems to be a surreal ride into time and space.

Dean wishes he could live life backwards instead of understanding it that way. He wishes that these revelations emerged without a price tag. He wishes he sometimes knew beforehand how the destiny he usually buttfucks into oblivion has planned things for him and for Sam. And for Cas. Before Heaven and Hell decided that the Winchester brothers and their pet angel were merely pawns in the godless game made up by part sibling rivalry and part madness.

Dean downs the rest of the beer and reaches for another. Thinking is so much easier when sore issues are sedated a bit. He cannot help but thinking about how important Cas is to them; he's almost a honorary Winchester. Especially now that Sam is gone, Dean can't imagine how he'd manage without having Cas with him. Dean misses Sam so much, but they can't be together. They're going to set the world on fire if they go near each other. Fire and oil of the apocalypse, indeed. 

It should perhaps make Dean worry that Cas been promoted. Angel, comrade in arms, friend, brother... Dean knows there is yet another, a final step on that ladder, one he doesn't want to think about. Cas is a great guy, at least most of the time. He's helpful, protective, resourceful, powerful and all sorts of awesome, especially when he tries to remember the dos and don'ts of human behavior.

The remaining part, the part that is not _most of the time_ , is the hours and minutes, the days and weeks and months when Castiel, angel of the Lord, makes Dean feel uncomfortable, as if he's losing his footing. It's the moments when Dean feels as if he's balancing on the edge of a cliff, thousands of feet to fall and no angel to save him at the bottom. No angel to pull him out of the mess he's in. Or worse: an angel who is falling with him. Because of him.

A mess it is, indeed and the mess has a name. Love.

Dean has never been in love before. Not really. He thought that perhaps that he might have been, at least one of his less-than-two-month-long relationships made him think so. But now that he knows how it feels, how hopeless and how desperately impossible love is, he knows that he never were. And love _is_ hopeless and impossible and will never happen because Dean is like a skating rink, all glistening smooth surface, but nothing sticks. Underneath there is all that machinery that no one ever sees, machinery to create the impenetrable ice above, to preserve the hard shell. It's not that Dean is cold, he is anything but. And that's the problem. If he allows this to burn hot he will melt and he will never again be as strong.

Love is a weakness. There is no way Dean is ever going to get what he wants most, no way he will ever dare reach for it. He is but the blink of an eye for an angel who will probably live forever. Or die and live again, and again and then one more time. Dean is merely a tiny part of a very long and intricate equation, one that will be solved even if he's missing. To Cas, Dean thinks, their connection, their _thing_ , is only distinguishable from _nothing_ because it goes on _now_ , right now. Castiel is more or less immortal. He's chomping on time like a horse on a bridle, chewing on it, pulling the reins from the end that Dean cannot control. Time is not as long for Cas as it is for Dean. It's a bit like being Cas's pet poodle. Which is fair enough since Cas is the Winchester pet angel, except poodles live very short lives.

So... love is difficult. It's just easier to get trashed, find some girl, fuck and get out. One-night-stands are little insignificant slices of time that end up in the ever-moving stream of minutes Dean has left before his time on earth is over. The fast-food of life. Easy on the stomach. Dean likes easy.

What isn't easy, though, is the look in Castiel's eyes, the way he looks at Dean when Dean has been at it again with the girls. Yeah, Dean likes it easy, so he ignores it. He knows what it means, that look. It means plain old catastrophe and, again, Dean likes love easy. Or no love at all.

Cas... he's not easy. He's constipation, distortion, stomach ache. Or just ache in general. In the slipstream of an angel passing by his life, Dean doesn't stand a chance.

So he doesn't go there. He doesn't act on the love he sees in Cas's eyes every time they look at each other. He can't.

Cas is not the only angel who sees time as something optional, something that is merely a rubber band to shrink or stretch or break at leisure. When Zachariah shows up, mojoing Dean fast forward to another point in time it shouldn't feel surprising. As such, it doesn't, it's just the circumstances. Zachariah is a bitch, time is off and so it goes. Kilgore Trout lives and Dean's impersonating Billy Pilgrim. Except no Tralfamadorians show up to ask if Dean is happy. Dean's cool with that. What he isn't cool with, however, is the major, uncontrollable asshole he's turning into, give or take five years. He liked the illusion of actually being a decent person underneath the layers of criminal acts, killings and debauchery. This other Dean, his future self, isn't. It's like seeing himself a carnival mirror, reflecting reality but distorted and wrung and most of all _wrong_.

Dean rubs his face, trying to clear out the cobwebs and the dust of his introspective little tour de weltschmerz. It's not like him, but being thrown forward five years into the future fucks with perception. _This isn't your time_ , the future Dean told him. Dean knows that. Dammit, he wants to get back to his page on the calendar. He wants to go back to a point in time when he, they, them, are not torturing bastards who are willing to put the mission before anything else.

Dean has seen it in his future self's eyes--the anger and the regret. The desperation. The desperation that might get them both killed come morning. Get them all killed. It's a roller coaster ride that Dean wants very much to bail on. Except he's on it, and there's no way to stop it. The other Dean seems to believe that Zachariah will step up and save him in case things go too far. He might be right, but thrown into a reality that is merely one possibility... Dean doesn't know. Here, in this time, the angels have given up and left. Doesn't that include Zachariah as well?

No matter what happens Dean is back in this recurring nightmare that he knows as The Last Night on Earth. He's back to counting the number of seconds and minutes he has left before they leave at midnight. Before he dies or gets thrown back into his own now to await yet another Last Night on Earth.

Lake Chitaqua is quiet.

Dean looks out the window, into the darkness, into a night that is filled with the sounds of a dying world split up in instances of noise by a loud silence. There is but death and owls screaming. Perhaps they'll still be here when the world burns. In the dim light Dean can see his image in a cracked mirror. It's the one he knows, only fragmented. His face hasn't changed, not in a night and a day. Not like he will change in the next five years. He hasn't changed much on the outside, but on the inside it's another matter. He's become ugly. Everything he believes in will have turned into fragments, too, shards of wishes and wants and limits he once imagined as firmly set.

Outside, far away, the world is in flames: the Croatoan virus is the fire that will devour humankind. In here, the single lamp provides a soft golden light, enough for him to move around in the unfamiliar cabin. Under his boots the floor is uneven. It creaks as he walks. Small, insignificant sounds when outside the earth is dying. He doesn't know where he's going; he is half way across the floor before he realizes that he's walking towards the door. He finds himself hesitating, his hand wound around the door handle, opening the door to the night.

Maybe it's the combination of being in mortal danger and at the same time being outside time, caught in a pocket of hours and minutes and seconds which belong outside the reality that Dean knows as his. Everything here belongs in that perhaps-universe, in the hypothetical future of a timeline not yet rolled out. Everything belongs here now. Everyone.

Cas.

Crazy, strange Cas. Cas with enough traces left of the angel he once were for Dean to recognize him underneath the love guru shit he's dishing out. _I like past you_ , Cas said.

As if he sees it precisely how they are, both. Bound in time and separated by it.

Suddenly Dean knows what he needs to do. He needs to take the chance he's been given. Tomorrow he might be dead. Although he probably won't die in this mad, reckless attempt at killing Lucifer, for Zachariah will drag him back home in time and no one will ever know precisely what went on. Three days that never happened. Days and events that never happened even before they begun.

Dean turns, grabs his jacket and closes the door to the cabin behind him, walking the short distance to Cas's love nest.

*

"I knew you'd come," Cas says, looking up at Dean. He sits on the floor, legs stretched out, his back against the corner of his large bed. He's got a bottle of absinthe in one hand. He smells of fennel. "I could see it in your eyes."

"You know squad. If you pull that pseudo-Buddhist mumbo-jumbo at me, I'm leaving," Dean says. He takes the few steps across the rug. It looks old. It mutes the sound of his boots. He looks down at Cas."I don't friggin' care what you're on, dude, just leave it out, yeah? I'm not one of your orgy girls." Dean realizes that he sounds jealous.

"But you're still here for-" Cas stops, his eyes remarkably clear and knowing. "No, you're not." His face softens. Dean suddenly knows that Cas is looking deeper, behind the skin and the smooth surface of indifference that Dean masters so well. "Yes," Cas says quietly. "I remember. The way you watched me when you thought I didn't see it. The way you were before. The way I were."

Suddenly Dean know what loss looks like.

"When you said you couldn't strap on your angel wings?" Dean hesitates. "Your mojo... it's gone?"

Cas doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. Dean knows him too well. Despite everything and the time that has passed, Dean knows. "I'm sorry, Cas." And Dean really is. He can't imagine how it must feel. Cas has fallen and Dean can't begin to imagine how much it must hurt not to be the angel he once were.

There's no reply, as if Castiel has run out of words as well. He just shakes his head and doesn't say anything.

What's there to say? What can Dean possibly say that can make up for the past and the future? _Sorry you're not an angel anymore, because otherwise I'd be a speck of dust compared to you when you disappear into the eternity that is your lifespan_? Or perhaps _I'm so happy you're no longer an angel, because then there's a chance you're gonna stay with me and my abandonment issues don't matter if you decide that you'd like to be with me_? Neither is appropriate, but they are both the truth. So Dean says nothing.

Cas gets up, slowly, looking at Dean in _that_ way, that intense, serious way that used to make Dean uncomfortable for a while, both before he fell in love with Cas and after. Now it makes his heart beat faster.

It's the same blue eyes that Dean looked into five years ago. It's not like with humans, Dean thinks, where experience and emotions scab and scar, leaving traces of hurt souls in the way people look at each other. It is as if the encounters with a cold, harsh world haven't made an impact although Cas's current state proves otherwise. His eyes are still the same. It's the same tenderness, the same need, pristine and smooth, untouched by seconds and minutes and hours that have passed since Cas took the road to this reality.

It's Cas who puts into words what Dean understands already. "When Zachariah returns for you, this moment ceases to exist," Cas says as if he knows for sure that Dean is going to make a different choice than his future self when he gets back to his reality. "It has already never happened." Cas smiles, a wonderful, wide, warm smile. "Let go, Dean."

That's all Dean needs to hear from the man he wants so badly. Right this instant it doesn't matter what Cas is, human or angel, past, now, future. He is everything Dean wants and this is the only chance Dean will ever get to let himself have a taste, a memory of what could be. Castiel surely knows what Dean wants and it's a need that is reflected in the way Cas looks at him.

The kiss is bittersweet sorrow, tinged with longing and loss.

It's Cas who closes the distance between them, the distance that can be closed. Time almost stops. Ever so slowly Cas leans in, his lips exactly as alluring as always, and presses his mouth to Dean's. It's a soft kiss, a kiss that leaves a way out: an escape route. It's a kiss that is spiced by the hesitancy that for years kept them from doing exactly what they are doing now.

Dean sighs, exhaling as he puts one hand on Cas's chest, the other wanders further down, following the curve of Cas's body. He's both thinner and more defined than Dean would have thought. Parting his lips slightly, Dean lets the kiss evolve, leaves it up to Cas to decide if he wants more, teasing him into action with the tip of a tongue, with the curl of a hand over Cas's hipbone. 

Cas needs little encouragement. In an instant, Dean finds himself in Cas's arms. Human or not, Cas is still faster and stronger than most men. Cas's strength surprises Dean although it shouldn't. But in Dean's fantasies he's always been the one who led the way, the one who would introduce Cas to the pleasures of the flesh that Cas inhabits. But there is clearly little that Cas needs to learn by now and Dean, pressed up against the wall, doesn't mind at all. Cas has certainly learned from experience.

Cas doesn't leave time for regret. He's gentle in the same way that an iron hand in a velvet glove is gentle. The wooden wall is rough against Dean's back as Cas pushes him back one more time, chest naked, his coat and t-shirt disposed of somewhere. Cas's hands are hot on his skin, as if the angel is still shining brightly and warmly inside him. Dean stops thinking. He pulls Castiel into a kiss that's wet and warm and deep, making little throaty sounds, trying to convey how much he wants to be with Cas.

"Dean, yes." Cas moans, kissing Dean back, trying to take off his own clothes at the same time. "Should have done this long ago," Cas whispers as he slides up against Dean's body again, finally rid of his pants. "Kissing you."

"Can never happen," Dean murmurs, his lips against Cas's neck, taking in scent and the silken feeling of skin against his lips. He licks a trail up to Cas's jaw, nibbling at it. "Any of it."

"Never did," Cas reassures him, as if he knows exactly what Dean means. He probably does. "When you return... make it not happen. For now... let me, Dean." Cas's voice is rougher and more intimate than Dean has ever heard it. "I know we can't-"

Dean cuts Cas off, not wanting to hear the words spoken out loud: that what they have in the past and what they have now are impossible to merge into something possible. Cas groans as Dean works teeth and lips over his jaw, rubbing his cheek against Cas's stubble, wanting the feeling of him to last. They fall into the bed, entangled in sheets and in each other, clumsy and determined both. It's neither slow, nor delicate. It's a rushed, desperate fumbling for lubrication and a similarly rushed and desperate preparation, barely enough to make Dean comfortable with the fact that Cas is between his legs, his cock pressing against Dean's slicked hole.

It hurts so good.

Dean's breathing turns into harsh little moans. He's suffocating. It's as overwhelming as he'd thought it would be. The pressure inside him is threatening to make him explode; he's close to coming, close to crying out, close to not being able to handle the small time slot where his longings are suddenly legal and out in the open. Cas holds him down with hands and kisses, pushing in deeper for each short snap of his hips. Castiel doesn't moan. He whispers caresses into Dean's ear. How much he wants him. How hard it is to hold back. How much he loves him.

Digging his hand into Cas's shoulder, clinging to him, Dean comes too soon, too violently, no control at all. Cas is stronger. He holds back, watching Dean as he chokes out words he'd never have said to anyone, Cas least of all. Except now Dean cannot stop himself. Cas closes his eyes for the first time, his full lips parted, wet and worn from their kisses. His orgasm is quiet and beautiful, the expression on Cas's face strangely peaceful.

Not caring that he's smeared in sweat and come, Dean wraps his arms around Cas's back when Cas resumes the kisses. Now, that time is measured in kisses it moves too quickly, little tick-tocks towards the potential disaster that is future Dean's mission. They don't speak. There is nothing to say. Dean wants Cas so badly. For a few kisses of time Dean wants to do what Cas has asked him, letting himself go, letting _everything_ go so he can stay in Castiel's arms like this as long as forever lasts in this future. Dean wishes he had the balls to go back to the past and pull Cas with him into another fall that neither of them might be able to stop. He can't. He knows it's the one thing they cannot afford in a world at risk of falling into Lucifer's hands.

"I liked past Dean," Cas says suddenly. "I would have liked this, too. Then."

Cas ruins it entirely, the resolve, and Dean has to rebuild the weak defense he's made. "Don't, Cas. Just don't," is all Dean can manage before midnight is knocking on the door and they have to leave.

*

They ride in the car together, Cas high on whatever it is he's doing that is not Dean or absinthe. Amphetamines. Dean is sore and hurting in so many ways. Oh, he got what he wanted, this taste of what he could never have, and as appetizing as it was, it has a bitter aftertaste, like the absinthe. At first Dean cannot point out what causes it; whether it's because he can never have Cas again like this or if it's because this future Cas is too different from the Cas Dean knows so intimately without ever having touched him.

Cas has become jaded. And as he explains and rants and takes some more pills, Dean knows that Cas has lost something that was so much more important than his wings: he has lost his innocence. And that is what hurts the most. It can never come back, he can never go back. _Debauchery_ , Cas says, as if it was nothing, as if he'd walk away clean. There are many reasons, Dean knows, to consider that Zachariah and the future Dean are right. But watching the ongoing death of an angel, the suffering and the longing behind the words... Dean cannot stand it. It's like a beautiful statue, a piece of art going under in the decay of time.

Dean will not let that happen to Castiel.

He is Dean's to save, like Sam is. Sam who isn't dead. Sam who is Lucifer's vessel. They are going to war no matter what. And Dean can change their odds, keeping Sam and their angel. All he has to do is to endure what will happen for the next hours, and the future is his to change.

*

It all happens so fast. Time is suddenly shrinking, little, concentrated moments of one violent betrayal followed in quick succession by the next, as if time itself needs to concoct itself to fit everything into the human measurements of seconds running out. Dean wants it to stop. Watching his future self, betraying everything Dean has ever believed in, is too painful. In front of him friends die. Oh, Dean has always been willing to make sacrifices, but they included the ones he made, not some he made of his friends. As much as the meeting with Lucifer is a shock, Lucifer, at least, is _honest_. It doesn't make him less appalling; it doesn't make Dean's heart hurt a tiny bit less, seeing the devil wearing his brother's body, knowing that Lucifer believes that he is telling the truth when he swears he won't hurt Sam. The last minutes Dean has left in the future feels like a nightmare that never ends, like torture that never stops. It is a future that can never happen, an eternity he wants to end.

Dean can prevent it. He just needs to make the right choices.

This time he'll try. God, he'll try to do the right thing. Because that usually goes so well.

And then, in a flash, it's over and he's back in the dirty motel room with Zachariah, his favorite douchebag angel.

Zachariah's supposedly encouraging speech about moral and saving the world leaves no impression on Dean. He's had it with inspirational speeches for a lifetime, he's had it with angel bullshit, he's had it with people and angels and devils telling him what he should do. He has left a future where his brother is the devil's bitch and the angel he's in love with has fallen so deeply that a bottomless pit seems shallow compared to Castiel's fall into sin and death.

 _Start small_. Dean thinks. He needs to start somewhere, saving the world. Making sure that Sam and Cas are with on the quest is his first priority. Zachariah will be so disappointed. There are highlights worth remembering in this.

"Nah," he tells Zachariah, pushing down the need to punch the asshole. He could just as well have done it, for it is most satisfying to see the anger in the angel's face as Zachariah threatens to teach Dean yet another lesson. Dean doesn't think that hitting Zachariah would have made him any angrier. Dammit. He should have hit him.

Zachariah is getting ready to give Dean yet another earful when time tightens and blends with distance and Dean finds himself standing on a road as dark as the one he's decided to take. It's empty. He turns, confused, only to be met by a smile and the twinkle of blue eyes. Of course. Castiel. His knight in white... not so much white, but armor.

Dean realizes that he's still smelling of sex and of Cas's come. He smiles, trying to hide his embarrassment behind a smile. "That's pretty nice timing Cas."

"We had an appointment," Cas says. There's a small, knowing smile on his lips. They look exactly like lips Dean has just kissed in a future far away in time and space. He sighs.

Dean is almost out of minutes.

Cas looks at him as if he knows. Everything. How much Dean loves him. How he hopes that Cas will love him back. It's not the first time that Cas has skipped ahead to look into the future, so maybe he does. Maybe he is waiting for the right moment in time, the right instant, the right minute. Dean puts his hand on Cas's shoulder, the only comfort he allows himself. "Don't ever change," he tells Cas, looking into eyes deep and dark from love, making it a promise that he won't change either. It's all they have. A promise and the memory of a few hours that never existed. They have work to do.

They are both out of hope and minutes.


End file.
